Shedding the skin of reactionaries

[Karl Marx's Camel]

In a situation when the polarization between workers and capitalists become evident, how many can be counted on to move to the other side, to become class conscious proletarians struggling for a proletarian state?

Do you think we can really suspect today's diehard reactionaries to become class conscious proletarians, losing their loyalty to the bourgeois? After all, many of these people do not seem to have any sympathy for other people, upholding egoism as the greatest virtue? How can people who have for years preached inequality, death, destruction and exploitation, who uphold so much hatred in their minds, become genuine revolutionaries?

And what would ordinary people think? Most people are against collectivization and natinoalism, because it has "ended in disastrious results".

We've all been fed with the sentiment that collectivization is a "wrong", "criminal" action that will lead to famine, hunger, dictatorship etc.

What political groups can we count on to jump to the proletarian side? Liberals? Politically neutral people? What about conservatives and other outright reactionaries?

And what is going to change this sentiment that collectivization is wrong, a sentiment held among the overwhelming population of workers?

[Idola Mentis]

Foucault claims governmentalité keeps people bound in self-correcting thought. It is a form of dominance - a relation of power where the dominated part is denied any resource by which they could change the relations of power.

But governmentalité is peculiar in that it doesn't physically remove the options by threat, force of arms, murder and mutilation. Instead, it gets people to dominate themselves. Our governmentalité makes us blind ourselves to the options which our masters does not want us to see.

If you find openings trough which to manipulate governmentalité, you can count on a large number of people. If you find a way to replace governmentalité with a form of power which does not rely on dominance, I believe you can count on anyone, anywhere.

I don't know which populations are currently susceptible to manipulation. Finding out would take skills I don't have, a lot of research, and the info would have to be used before it changed (about as fast as it was collected). Speculating exactly how you can get people to think free, I do all the time. But I can't claim to be getting anywhere :) Any ideas, maybe applied to some of the groups you mentioned?

[Kropotkin Has a Posse]

We could win over democratic socialists and social democrats, this is like their wet dream although they say it won't ever happen. Right Libertarians would knee-jerk refuse to support us, but they're silly and anyone who promotes no welfare or health care plan at all can't last in a serious political environmnt. Liberals...50-50, I'd say.

[BobKKKindle$]

One of the reasons that some people advocate the continuation of the present political and economic system us that they percieve the state as an objective entity that exists above class struggle, and this any challenge of the state is seen as a direct infringement upon the abstract values of freedom and justice. A Revolutionary insurrection would provoke a hostile response from the state apparatus (as the political manifestation of the economic power of the ruling class) and thus would reveal the true nature of the state. This has historical precedent (although the state was percieved a slightly different way) in the events of 1905 in Tsarist Russia. Attempts to placate the Tsar with peaceful demands and symbolic protest provoked the repression of the Cossack guard, which in turn showed the people, that, contrary to what they had believed, the Tsar did not have compassion for socially disadvanatged groups but was simply concerned with the continuation of his own autocratic power. This allowed for the development of a revoltionary movement for the overthrow of Autocracy. This may not even require a revolution - The RAF advocated the use of isolated violence to force the state to reveal its true function.

If, in the face of the construction of a socialist society, certain groups still call for a return to Capitalism, they can simply be denied the benefits and access to the products of the new society whcih is being formed. If they present a threat or command economic resources, force can be used against them - Revolution, is, after all, not a dinner party.

[StartToday]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26, 2007 06:20 am
anyone who promotes no welfare or health care plan at all can't last in a serious political environmnt.
Wouldn't no welfare be a good thing? Not in the current system of course (which is where Libertarians fail, because they support capitalism) - I mean, wouldn't people cease to be capitalised on by their employers if capitalism got the boot? I always assumed that there would be no need for welfare because nobody would be poor enough to need it after wealth was decentralised.

[Idola Mentis]

One of the reasons that some people advocate the continuation of the present political and economic system us that they percieve the state as an objective entity that exists above class struggle, and this any challenge of the state is seen as a direct infringement upon the abstract values of freedom and justice.
Some people want the things the state provides them with, and see no other way of getting it. They don't realize they're being bribed into acceptance of the unacceptable; slavery, inequality, predation. They no longer need to be prevented from contemplating alternative ways of getting the security they need; they edit their own thoughts out of indoctrination, distrust, habit, and maybe fear of facing the blood on their hands. This is one face of governmentality.

The bribed and their bribers are taking more than their share of the total product. This means someone is being deprived. While the bribed produce more than they recieve, the deprived recieve less than they need to rise above slavery. Some get less than they need to live. Unlike the bribed, the deprived are trapped by poverty. They do not have access, surplus, time to learn or even think of alternatives to their state. This is another face of governmentality - the eradication of each individual's ability to find ways to fundamentally change the conditions of his life. Mental straightjackets on both sides.

I wonder which governmentality is easier to change?


A Revolutionary insurrection would provoke a hostile response from the state apparatus (as the political manifestation of the economic power of the ruling class) and thus would reveal the true nature of the state.(...)

The states does violence on people every single day, and still, people will consider you strange for critisizing it. Why doesn't daily state violence make its pawns realize the state's true nature as dominator rather than liberator? Governmentality again. Mind games built to create acceptance of state violence. This technology of opression has come a long way since the tsar.

The state supresses violence as part of its bribery. It is one of many services to those who keep it going, delivering security. A service made necessary by the existence of the state in the first place, as most of the things it supplies and justifies its existence by. In the mentality of government, violence proves the necessity of the state. Break the mentality, and its true nature becomes apparent.


If, in the face of the construction of a socialist society, certain groups still call for a return to Capitalism, they can simply be denied the benefits and access to the products of the new society whcih is being formed. If they present a threat or command economic resources, force can be used against them - Revolution, is, after all, not a dinner party.

Why bother, and why stoop to their level? Let them return to capitalism. Capitalism doesn't work outside a power state of dominance.